History of the Department

Cultural Anthropology

The department was founded in 1963 and was then called 'Department of General and Comparative Ethnography'.

The Africanist, Professor Sture Lagercrantz, was appointed chairman. During the 1968 period, many left-wing students thought that Lagercrantz's focus on material culture and cultural characteristics was old-fashioned and apolitical. These students wanted to change direction and created the 'Division of Social Anthropology' at the Department of Sociology. There, however, different shades of political color clashed with each other. Personality conflicts flared up and the situation in the department became chaotic.

When Professor Lagercrantz retired in 1976, the Africanist Anita Jacobson-Widding was appointed as his successor. The university then decided to close down the Department of Social Anthropology. The PhD students there were divided between different disciplines, and what was until then called 'Department of General and Comparative Ethnography' was renamed 'Cultural Anthropology'.

Anita Jacobson-Widding retired in 2001. She was succeeded by Hugh Beach. Under his leadership, the department developed a strong international profile also in political ecology with a focus on the circumpolar peoples, especially the Sami, which Beach had been most interested in. In 2009, the Americanist Jan-Åke Alvarsson and the following year, 2010, the Africanist Sten Hagberg were hired as professors. In 2015, professor Don Kulick joined the department. In the same year, Mats Utas was hired and became a professor in 2019.

Ethnology

The discipline of ethnology was originally called 'folklore research' and the first post was an associate professorship, created in 1909 and held by Sven Lampa. This was the first position in the discipline to be established in Sweden. It was not until 1948 that a professorship was awarded to Dag Strömbäck, who held the position until 1967. Strömbäck had a mainly folkloristic and philological focus and was also head of the Landsmåls- och folkminnesarkivet in Uppsala, which is now the Institute for Languages and Folklore.

In 1971, the name of the disicpline was changed to 'ethnology, especially European'. Anna Birgitta Rooth was appointed to this chair in 1973. Rooth also had a folkloric research profile, but for many years also devoted considerable attention to image analysis and the research project Iconographic Archive, which is a comprehensive catalog of cultural-historical image material.

Anna Birgitta Rooth retired in 1984 and was succeeded in 1987 by Anders Gustavsson, who resigned in 2000 and whose research focus was largely characterized by studies of popular movements and popular customs. He was succeeded in the chair in 2004 by Gösta Arvastson, who had already been promoted to professor in the subject four years earlier. Arvastson initiated and ran for several years the Forum for Schools project, which was a collaboration between the University and Uppsala Municipality. He retired in 2010 and was succeeded in the chair in 2011 by Ella Johansson. At the same time, Birgitta Meurling was also promoted to professor in the discipline. Following a merger with Gotland University in 2013, the department also operates in Visby, where Owe Ronström was a professor.

The Departments of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology merged in 1996 and were co-located two years later at Trädgårdsgatan 18 in central Uppsala. In 2004, the joint department moved to its current premises in Engelska Parken.